MY CHILDHOOD MEMORIES - II
There is always one moment in
childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.
-
Graham Greene
5.
To resume the story of my childhood days
in Chhapara, I’d first cite some of my father’s diary entries about my playful
activities, before supplementing them with some of my own memories.
1942: Aug 28. MM (Balendu Shekhar)
goes everyday with me for darshan of Dharmnathji. From last one month, he’s
developed a habit of being around me for going to the temple with me. If left
behind, he starts crying. In the temple he would bow his head and join hands
for his prayer desiring for good education. For the whole day he would keep
singing songs happily. MM seems to be bright and talented…
Here he records, how with my siblings I had
been sent to our village Unwans because of the 1942 ‘Quit India’ movement. It
was on Sep. 12) we left Chhapara with our
uncle, Devnandan Lal, by boat, as train services were being disrupted
everywhere. I have vivid memory of our long boat journey in river Ganga, and I
still remember with thrill the sight of a snake slithering fast in the mud by
the river bank as our boat plied forward. We went by boat upto Ara, and from
there we travelled by a horse-cart (‘ekka’) upto our village - about forty
miles south-west on a rugged road.
Father, - whom we called Babuji - also
joined us there for the Pooja Vacation in October. My eldest brother AM was
already admitted into Chhapara Zila School and was a great lover of books –
especially in English. In one diary entry my father writes:
Nov. 26: AM’s English pronunciation
is very good. He has avid interest in his studies. He has great affection for
MM and his two younger sisters. He’d ask everyday about MM’s return from the
village….He loves MM with great fondness. All my four children are lovingly
attached amongst themselves.
Everyday, after return from college,
Babuji would change clothes and wrap a thin towel round his waist and taking a ‘khurpi’
(spud) go into the small garden (‘fulwari’) at the back of our house for tending
to the plants and watering them. And I would always be with him as he kept
working there for an hour or so before having his evening bath – after which he
will routinely go to the Dharmnathji temple taking me along.
Dec. 20: I got fatigued after working
at the three rows of the plants in the ‘fulwari’. But working at the flowers and
watering them gives them new life and also adds to one’s happiness. Working
there is also good for health. At the same time one also gets some flowers and
tulsi leaves for the worship of Thakurji…
In another, later entry (6 March, 1945) he
gets emotional about that little backyard garden:
Kept working in the ‘fulwari’ for a
short while. But one day it will have to be left behind. There is one ‘Kaneil’
tree (with yellow daffodil like blossoms)and three rose bushes – but I feel sad
for them. “रोड़े चुन-चुन महल
बनाया, लोग कहें घर मेरा रे। ना घर तेरा,
ना घर मेरा, चिड़िया रैन बसेर रे!”
With stone upon stone I built a house.
But the house is neither mine, nor yours.
It is only like a bird’s nest!
6.
It was now 1943, and I was entering into
my seventh year. Babuji records some of the rituals of my early childhood, like
my ‘mundan’ and my ‘akshararambh’ and similar other day-to-day events in his
diary.
June 3-7: Preparations went on for
our journey to Baidyanath Dham (June 3). Mangal’s ‘mundan’ is on Monday which
could not be performed in his fifth year because of his mother’s death. She had
died leaving him in his fourth year and it was becoming late for that ritual…
Mangal’s ‘mundan’ was performed today(7th) at Bidyanath Dham, the
holy shrine of ‘Ravaneshwar’ Shivji. AM’s birth and ‘mundan’ had taken place in
Benares in the west while Mangal’s in the east in Darbhanga and Devghar
respectively. Saroj took Mangal’s shaven hair in her frock…AM is of a quiet
nature, whereas Mangal is a bit naughty, but more practical, and is likely to
look after the affairs of the family as is the tradition in my family…
Aug 14-15: Went with Mangal to the
market for buying things for his ‘akshararambh’(the ritual of a child’s first
writing ‘Om’ with a chalk on a slate)…Around three in the afternoon (of 15th)
the ceremony was performed by Prof.‘Dwij’ .Pt Yagyanandji performed the pooja
of god Ganesh and goddess Saraswati. Then there was a feast for my college
collegues and some invited neighbours. Mangal put Rs 5, with a dhoti and chadar,
on the feet of ‘Dwij’ji….
Dec. 7: Like an infant MM sleeps with
me cuddled in my lap during nights, as he would have with his mother. Bereft of
motherly love, he seeks it in my lap…. (A little later he wrote:) Every night
MM sleeps only with me and asks me to tell him ‘Ramkatha’ - the story of god
Ram – he insists - in chaste Bhojpuri(28.6.45).
With his long associations with most of
the important literary personalities in Hindi, my father would often invite
them for lectures in the college literary meets, though I was too small as a
child to understand their significance. Literary figures and aspirants, local
people and students often came to see my father or to present him their newly
written books. Of them I remember the young poets Janki Ballabh Shastri and
Shyam Nandan Kishore, et al coming to
meet my father to present their first collection of poems. In one diary entry,
he writes about the visit of Rahul Sankrityayan:
Dec. 17. There was a seminar in the
Philosophy Department in the college this evening addressed by Rahul Baba. He
said that Indian philosophy has been deeply influenced by Greek philosophy.
According to him – Gautam, Kanad, Bharadwaj, Yagyavalk were of later time than
Buddhadev. He scrubbed hard the old Indian traditional philosophy on the
touchstone of history. He tried to prove that the new generation was far ahead
in terms of knowledge and civilization as compared with the older generation.
That is how the modern logicians are going about nowadays.
Incidentally, one event of a sudden visit
of Niralaji one day at our Ratanpura house stands out vividly in my memory.
1942: March 18. Niralaji arrived
today all on a sudden. There was his poetry recitation in my college under my
presidentship. We had a long chat about memories of our‘Matwala’ days. I had a
deep surge of nostalgia of those golden days which will never come back now.
Our present time is full of only loss and emptiness…Niralaji left for Lucknow
by the night train.
I
have written about that august visit in some detail in a Hindi memoir in my
book ‘Darpan Me We Din’. But I’ve a clear memory of his sudden arrival one
morning in our house. My father was preparing for his morning ablutions and his
pooja. As usual, I was with him. When Niralaji came he hugged my father in a
close emotional embrace for a while as I stood there. Suddenly Niralaji saw me
by my father’s side and lifted me up with both hands, putting me astride his broad
shoulders. He was a tall and well-built person, and while on his shoulders, in
fear of a sudden fall, I tightly grabbed his long flowing silken tresses and
kept holding on to them throughout as he kept chatting with my father. That is
a glorious moment of my tryst with the greatest modern Hindi poet indeliably
etched in my memory!1
Meanwhile, I was growing up slowly. One
day, as the diary records, Babuji took me along to the railway station to meet
some of his old literary friends, in break journey, who were waiting there for
their next train.
1944: March 6. Pt Vachaspati
Pathak,my friend from Kashi, came. He was returning from the Suhrid Sangh
literary seminar in Muzaffarpur. I accompanied him, with Mangal, to the railway
station where Pt Makhanlal Chaturvedi, Pt Sohanlal Dwivedi, Pt Shrinarayan
Chaturvedi, Prof. Krishnadev Prasad Gaud ‘Bedhab’, et al were waiting for their
train for Benares. Pt Makhanlalji gave an orange each to Mangal and me. He also
blessed Mangal.
7.
During his college service, my father had
two long vacations in summer and winter which were mostly spent in our village
home. By 1945, Babuji had sent my two sisters to stay at the village home. It
was in that same large dozen-roomed house that our joint family of two uncles,
aunts and their children lived.
The big thatched-roof house had an outer
veranda with a spacious raised platform in front with two small rooms at the
eastern and western ends of the veranda. This outer part was meant as sitting place for gents and the outsider
males. For the female members of the family there was a big rectangular internal
court yard - with a wood-apple tree right in the middle - with thatched
verandas on all four sides and rooms behind each of thefour inner verandas.
Initially there was a family arrangement by which my father and his two
brothers – Rampoojan Lal and Devnandan lal (the former deceased in 1930) – with
their families, had each a share of four rooms. Attached, both in the eastern
and western parts were small enclosed open spaces meant for female washrooms,
etc. Till a final formal partition took place among the three families, my
father was allotted the eastern portion in the inner house which was initially on
the eastern side. It was in a room in the centre of the inner eastern verandah in
which my mother had expired. I have a very hazy memory of ‘Amma’ lying in her
illness on a cot in this room brestfeeding me. My two uncle’s families lived in
the southern and the western sides of the inner house.
Things were not very happy and amiable in
our large joint family, and there always was a palpable tension among my
youngest uncle, Devnandan Lal, my two aunts – the middle one, a widow now – and
my mother, ever since her marriage2.
My aunts, in particular, were always bitterly jealous of my mother for her
always staying away in towns while they had to live in the village home. At one
place in his diary my father writes:
1945: Feb. 22. The house tangle still
remains unresolved. All my life has been wasted in this village house problem.
I was born in such a family that my whole life was spent in such worries.
Otherwise, I’d have done much more in my literary pursuits in my life….
During the Summer Vacation of 1945 (in
May-June) finally under a family settlement, Babuji was allotted his share in
the house – this time in the western portion, with the eastern portion now
allotted to his deceased brother’s widow and his only son (Lallan, the eldest
among all siblings in my generation). My youngest Uncle, Devnandan Lal,
preferred to construct a new house in a new family plot of land, situted just a
little to the north, with adequate financial compensation from the two other
brother-sharers. Babuji writes in his diary:
May 21-29: In the evening I moved with my children into the western portion of our village house. In the evening, Saroj and Bindu cooked our dinner in the kitchen. It was on this same day and same date in 1928, when my third marriage had taken place in Bilaspur which gave me my four lovely children…All my books for my library presently lie scattered. They must be properly dusted and arranged now…Both the two wooden almirahs of books were put in their proper places in the oblong room in the west. I have always been collecting and preserving books and journals - which is all the material wealth I have. AM remains deeply engrossed in hs books in the library throughout the day. MM also helps in arranging and caring for books….By God’s grace ,the house arrangement has finally been settled. Although illumination from earthen lamps is a little inconvenient.
On my uncle’s insistence, my two sisters – Sarojini (b. 1931) and Vinodini (b. 1933) – were now compelled (since 1945) to live in our village home to look after our farming affairs, and thus were deprived of their proper school education. Both had only had some elementary education when Babuji was in Laheriasarai, and soon after coming to Chhapara, they were shifted to the village home in Unwans. When once during the Pooja Vacation, Babuji was leaving Unwans for Patna, he writes in his diary:
1946: Oct.9. My daughters became very sad to hear about my going. Because of my family problems, I could not give them proper school education. This will be a permanent regret in my life. I only gave them a copy of ‘Ramcharit Manas’ for regular reading. They had already learnt writing in Hindi script while in Chhapara. But I wish they had learnt enough Hindi by now which would have helped them in their future life.
But my sisters were now growing up in
their teens. Sarojini was now 15 and Binodini 13, and Babuji was getting worried
about their marriage, also because their mother was no longer alive to take
good care of them. In that year’s Matriculation exam at Chhapara Zila Schoo AM had
appeared in his Matriculation exams and done very well in all subjects, but had
failed in Maths. (My father writes there: “I, too, had failed twice in Maths”.
May 9).
FN 1. My father, in his later life, wrote a series of memoirs of his close association with Nirala, available in SSSS, Vol-2. My Hindi memoir of my serendipitous tryst with the great poet can be read in ‘Darpan Me We Din’
FN 2. It had been going on since long in the past as my father’s early diaries testify – even in the time of my father’s second wife, who had lived with my father for some time when he was serving as a school teacher in Ara around 1915, and later also for a few months in Calcutta during 1926, where she had died following the death by small pox of her eight year old daughter Vasanti (my father’s very first issue). As my father had moved away from our village during his school education followed by his teaching stint at Ara, his two brothers managing the family farming affairs always felt uneasy about the state of family affairs.
The Shiva temple, east of our house, on way to the river (described in 'Mera Bachpan')
Below: The Kochan (or Thora) river further east of the temple (also described in 'Mera Bachpan')
The Shivalaya just north of the village with a pond full of lotus flowers where my father would always stop first before entering the village whenever he came to Unwans (our village, about 15Kms south of Buxar)
[To be continued]
Text& Photos © Dr BSM Murty
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